Wednesday, November 24, 2010

BrooklynLady makes a mean lasagna. The two that she most often makes are spinach lasagna and sausage lasagna, and both are gobbled up very quickly in our house. Recently she made a new lasagna using fall ingredients, something that none of us had eaten before.

Pumpkin, goat cheese, and sage lasagna..delicious! She combined the pumpkin with fresh soft goat cheese and chopped sage and alternated layers with Béchamel. This is an extremely savory lasagna, rich with sweet pumpkin, slightly tangy from the goat cheese, and perfumed with sage. A large pan of this lasted all of two days, as the kids loved it too.

That's the dish. Please, you be the sommelier. What would you serve with this pumpkin, goat cheese, and sage lasagna?

I agree with the people who suggested whites. If going italian, i think northern chardonnay, friuli, soave, orvieto would all work. I'm also wondering if a medium to full-bodied red Italian, like a langhe Nebbiolo or barbera, or even a big, earthy brunello could go well to offset the savory, oily cheesiness and creamy pumpkin an béchamel. Of course, one could also dig deep and pop a 1962 Gaja Barbaresco.

Man, such great suggestions. I love the idea of an orange wine, and i usually have a hard time thinking of what to eat with those. makes perfect sense here. Sean - I almost opened the Gonon 07 Les Oliviers, but I had just had one not too long ago, and didn't want to drink it again so soon. But that made sense to me too. Dr J - I never even thought of Lambrusco, but that will be one for the future. I imagine that for this dish you;re talking white Lambrusco, right?

We drank a 2007 Chidaine Montlouis Les Bournais and it was really good, actually. A bit, but not too much, residual sugar, good acidity, full in body, interesting herbal flavors. Perhaps strange, but it worked.

@anonymous I was being dogmatic for humor's sake. But Lambrusco would be my very first choice when lasagne are concerned. In Emilia, tortelloni are filled with pumpkin and Parmigiano Reggiano this time of year. Lambrusco is the pairing di rigore.

Hate to be counter-intuitive here (let alone late to the comment thread) but assuming the pumpkin is smoky as well as sweet, I'd love Clos Roche Blanche's Gamay with this dish; a Loire grolleau would be awesome, too. I love Nicola's suggestion for the LDH Viña Tondonia Rosé Gran Reserva. More conventionally, I'd consider a Grignolino d'Asti or a Chianti. Of course, if I can find a Lambrusco di Sorbara, I'll take Do Bianchi's advice and for *sure* make a lasagna.